A STUDY OF REMEMBRANCE IN POST-YUGOSLAV CINEMA THROUGH AIDA BEGIC'S SNOW

Апстракт

In the aftermath of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, women’s cinema gradually emerged as a significant mode of artistic expression, capable of transcending the geopolitical boundaries of the Balkans by articulating collective remembrance of wartime trauma and complex forms of nostalgia for a vanished social order. This review examines the distinctive cinematographic strategies employed in Aida Begić’s Snow (Snijeg), situating the film within the broader framework of post-war Bosnian and post-Yugoslav cinema.

Begić stands among the relatively few directors who foreground gendered narratives of trauma in the Balkan context. Through a close reading of her visual and narrative techniques, this review explores the ways in which women’s memories are constructed on screen and how female protagonists negotiate the burdens of the past while attempting to sustain everyday life in conditions of social isolation, economic precarity, and symbolic exclusion. Particular attention is paid to Begić’s deliberate centering of women’s embodied presence and subjectivity, which reconfigures the dominant war-film paradigm that typically privileges male perspectives and direct representations of combat.

The analysis further includes a brief consideration of Igor Čamo’s musical score, whose restrained yet evocative composition reinforces the film’s atmosphere of suspended temporality and emotional interiority. By contrasting Snow with other post-Yugoslav films that depict remembrance primarily through the reconstruction of war scenes, this review highlights Begić’s alternative aesthetic: one that relocates memory from the battlefield to the intimate, gendered spaces of survival and resilience.